ASUS has advised overnight that its long term CEO – Jerry Shen – will be leaving the company by the end of the year. The move will come ahead of “a comprehensive corporate transformation” of the company. The change will see ASUS focus more on power users such as gamers through its ROG gaming phones and accessories along with partnering with an AIoT startup called iFast.
Shen, who has been CEO of ASUS for 11 years, is leaving the company amidst a major global restructure which will see a new co-CEO roles created. The new co-CEOs will be Samson Hu (currently the global customer service leader) and S.Y. Hsu (the current PC business leader).
The company will also focus more on power users for its mobile device, meaning that ASUS could build more of their ROG gaming phones and accessories, and focus less on their ZenPhone devices going forward.
Shen will be moving to a new AIoT startup called iFast, to become its Chairman and CEO. He’ll be working in a business that targets B2B apps. ASUS will be partnering with iFast through a 30% stake in the new venture startup company, to help “effectively transition the company into the AIoT industry”.
Under Shen’s 11 years with ASUS, the company has brought us devices such as ZenFone, ZenBook, PadFone, and the Transformer series. However, Shen will always be best known as the creator of the Eee PC notebook that started the whole netbook craze back in 2006.
The restructure comes as the company reported a a one-time loss of NT$6 billion (approx US$190 million) to cover “loss of inventory, royalties, production costs and organisational adjustment expenses.”
It will be interesting to see if this new focus and restructure helps the company to take on fellow Chinese competitors, Xiaomi, OPPO and Huawei.
